The Most Important Economic Element in This War Ideology Was Inflationism

When the first edition of this book was published twelve years ago, the nations and their governments were just preparing for the tragic enterprise of the Great War. They were preparing, not merely by piling up arms and munitions in their arsenals, but much more by the proclamation and zealous propagation of the ideology of war. The most important economic element in this war ideology was inflationism.

--Ludwig von Mises, preface to the second German edition of The Theory of Money and Credit, trans. H.E. Batson (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), 33.